


All's Well

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 08:25:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13632477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Jim has always felt alone





	All's Well

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2018 Sentinel Bingo prompt 'chosen family'

All's Well

by Bluewolf

Jim had long thought himself to be alone in his life; that he would always be alone.

His own mother was dead, had died - he discovered years later - when he was a baby; and the stepmother - Stephen's mother - he had believed was his mother had walked out when he was eight, and Steven six. He had never known why, but when he was ten he had overheard a phone conversation between her and his father and realized that she didn't want the boys in her life. At all.

His father had turned everything in his life into a competition with Steven, completely alienating them. Steven resented any favor Jim was shown; Jim felt that Steven was unfairly favored, because their father always chose to believe what Steven said. It had been no hardship to leave when he was eighteen, to join the army.

He was happy enough there, but he formed no real friendships. There was always the awareness that he - or they - could be transferred, and that they were unlikely to see each other again. The nearest he had to friends were the men going with him to Peru... and they all died.

He did form a sort of friendship with Incacha, the Chopek shaman - but he always knew that would be short-lived, because the army would come for him one day.

Which – eventually – they did.

Back home he joined the police. He did his job with a dogged determination, but knew he was thoroughly disliked by most of his fellow workers. He did form a casual friendship with his partner, Jack Pendergrast, but Jack disappeared - and it was widely surmised that he had stolen money he was supposed to be delivering for a ransom. Jim defended him, but even Jim wasn't sure how much of that was conviction and how much sheer cussedness.

His marriage - and that was when he discovered that the woman he had believed was his mother was actually a stepmother - to Carolyn Plummer was short-lived. He admitted to himself that much of the blame was his; he had no idea how to treat a wife. And so he found himself once again leading a totally solitary life.

When his senses re-emerged after a solitary stakeout, he remembered his father calling him a 'freak' and found himself wondering if all his problems in life were caused by them... though he had a vague memory of them being of help when he lived with the Chopek.

And then an enthusiastic young grad student conned his way into Jim's life, and everything changed.

***

When he visited it, Jim wasn't exactly happy about the warehouse where Blair lived, but Blair pointed out that it was good value, space-wise, for what he was paying. In any case, it was the only place he had been able to rent while he was doing his current study on the effects of TV violence on the little Barbary ape that cuddled against him. Nowhere else had been willing to let him rent when he had a 'pet'.

And then, just two or three weeks after they met, one evening when Jim was visiting the warehouse, he heard gunfire; there was an explosion and the wall between Blair's warehouse and the one next door was breached. He helped Blair gather up one or two things - though it was more important to get out - and carried the ape's cage out, Blair being almost fully occupied keeping the little animal relatively calm.

Blair had nowhere to go. Jim was uncertain, but agreed to let the grad student stay with him 'for a week'.

Well, by the end of the week the little ape was, as Blair had promised, 'out of Jim's hair' when he was returned to the zoology department... but Blair himself became a permanency in the loft. Neither man said anything... they just fell into a comfortable life together.

And Jim knew that he would never be alone again.

Urged by Blair, he was at least speaking to his father and brother; but they were merely related to him by blood. He had a family of choice, now - Simon, Joel, Rafe, H... even Megan though he and she often irritated the hell out of each other. He would do anything for any of them. But the one brother of choice, the one person he loved more than any other, was Blair.

Blair, who gave him so much so totally selflessly.

He looked over to where Blair was typing industriously on his laptop... and Blair turned his head and smiled. There was no need for words; Jim returned the smile, then turned his attention back to the book he was reading.

All was well with his world.


End file.
